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My coworker, Josh, went up to Big Bear for the 4th and sent me this photo while he was there:

Josh’s Urban Pole Adventure

This is what happens when wrestlers decide to take on a new challenge. 🙂 Now, I’ll have to find time to teach him an inversion!

In other news, I haven’t posted much over the last week because I have been injured – not by pole, though! I sustained a pretty bad dog bite to my left hand while breaking up a fight at work (I work with dogs at my day job). An urgent care visit, x-rays, and a lot of saline solution and gauze, etc – that was my Friday afternoon. I spent most of the weekend alternating between cleaning the wounds, resting (okay, okay, being stoned on Vicodin on a couch, in front of a tv), and trying to test the limits of my newly busted hand.

Which is also my pole hand.

I saw the doctor again today, and overall, am doing really well. Most of the swelling is gone, which allows me to do more with it, and the wounds look like they are starting to heal well. I am not allowed to go back to work just yet, because of the nature of my job, and I am still on antibiotics. I should hopefully have full range of motion back in my hand within two weeks (if I don’t, I have to go back for an MRI to look at internal injuries to tissue/tendons). In the meantime, I have bandages and a sling for outside of the house to keep the wounds clean and to keep me from overdoing it with using the hand. It still gives me a fair amount of trouble in very basic ways – I don’t have full range of motion to my arm – can’t extend it fully in certain ways – and my hand does not open fully, nor close fully, which means I can’t grasp or grip anything with weight involved. Which means…no pole.

Since I will be out of pole for a couple of weeks, at least, I am looking into heading into class and working on my right hand – which, oddly enough, is my strong hand in real life (which is why I wasn’t totally taken out by the injury, in terms of life/world). I have very little coordination in my right when it comes to pole, and very little conditioning as well, so it might be good to do a few weeks of work on it, as frustrating as it might prove to be. 🙂

It’s a well known fact that pedicures don’t fair well when subjected to pole dancing. At least, not if you’re doing any kind of floor work. I’ve never managed to keep polish on my toes for long, but while trying to replicate a spin that I saw in a video of one of Oona Kivela’s performances (a spin I do, but not nearly as well as she does), I left polish – and skin – and picked up a lot of dirt. Which made me laugh – I took it as a sign I’d been giving it my all. 🙂

This is the video in which the spin appears at the 2:26 mark (ps – she’s amaaaaaaaazing!):

Um. LOVE.

I practiced for a little over an hour this afternoon, just running through a series of tricks and holding some of the ones I plan to do in the routine – for conditioning, I get into the tricks I want to do and hold them for a while, usually a count of 30. It not only requires me to lock the trick and nail it/be solid, but it also ups my endurance, which will help me overall. I also ran through a transition that is new to me, so I can start to build the muscle memory for it – the pole was super slippery, despite the incredible amount of product I layered on it over the course of the practice, so I had a hard time doing certain things (lots of sliding going on).

I did manage to do another shoulder mount alone, which is awesome. I still don’t seem to have much in me to do more than one completed one, but even one is a major improvement over none. 🙂 It’s also a sign that I’m getting stronger, which is great! I also was able to do my signature transition between my two strongest tricks, which is still shaky because of the change in width of the pole (going from 50mm to 45mm) – I couldn’t manage it last week, so this is a step in the right direction.

In reading through the competitor packet, I found a requirement that I was unaware of until now: I must incorporate the spinning pole in the routine. Inner Monologue: “Fuck.”

Spinning pole is so beautiful. I love to watch it. I’m not a huge fan of working on it, mostly because I don’t have much experience and haven’t mastered the art of controlling the spin speed of the pole. I don’t plan on putting many tricks on it, but since I am required to do something over there, I have to choose one or two things to throw on it. There’s a great spin that I can do as a hold pose on the static pole…but I’m so scared to do it on spinning!! It requires me to drop very close to the ground. I tried to get into the pose near the ground today on the static and found it so hard that I ended up getting on the ground and positioning my legs from there. I could hold it, but it hurt like a bitch. So…maybe I’ll choose another trick?? 🙂

Unfortunately, at the end of my practice, I landed funny on my foot and felt a sharp pain in the ball of it. No idea what I did. I’ve had it wrapped for a while (had to go into work and be on my feet), and it didn’t bother me that much while I was there, but really hurt on the drive home. I’ve got it iced and have been elevating it since I got home, and it’s sore, but I can move everything – toes, ankle, am able to point and flex. I have no idea what I did, but I’ll have to baby it the next few days and see where I’m at. Other than that, I did fairly well with the practice – I worked up a sweat, I free-styled a bit and played with character tells during random songs, I hit most of my tricks well and stuck them. I think that, with time invested working on that pole, as well as in class, I will get stronger and be able to nail what I want to do. I think I’m meeting with Kat to work on the choreo again next week, which I’m excited about! I’ve been continuing with research into costumes and have some ideas…mulling over if I should pay for professional hair/makeup at the event…seems crazy that it’s 5 weeks away!!